A new generation of biohackers is literally taking the future of biology into their own hands, and it’s raising some red flags with the government. The basic concern: how can we avoid proliferation of dangerous bioagents?

The situation will come to a head on Friday night July 30 at the Open Science Summit conference at UC Berkeley. Edward You, Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI’s… read more

A handful of forward-thinking biogerontologists has joined together to offer a new direction for aging intervention. Their commentary, published July 14 in Science Translational Medicine, presents the case for preventing what the scientists call an “unprecedented global aging crisis”—a sharp rise in the numbers of retired elderly in developing and industrialized nations across the world.

From both a humane and economic standpoint, a world with too many sick… read more

As noted in our 2010 State of the Future (the 14th annual report from the Millennium Project, just published), the world is in a race between implementing ever-increasing ways to improve the human condition and the seemingly ever-increasing complexity and scale of global problems.

If current trends in population growth, resource depletion, climate change, terrorism, organized crime, and disease continue and converge over the next… read more

I attended and spoke at the Summit and enjoyed it very much; nearly every speaker had something interesting to say, and one came away from the conference with an excited feeling that the Singularity is, indeed, drawing palpably nearer… read more

What Do Brooklyn’s Tea Lounge and Al Qaeda Have In Common? It’s time to kill bureaucracy. What do I mean? And what does this call for revolution have to do with the next generation of netbooks, Apple tablets and Google Phones? Not to mention with the Taliban and Al Qaeda?

America needs a productivity revolution to lead the world into… read more

Seeing Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in IMAX 3-D (which continues as No. 1 in box office sales for the second weekend in a row), I thought that the Jabberwocky poem came from the original Alice in Wonderland, but it didn’t. It came from the sequel, Through the Looking Glass.

Recall that Lewis Carroll was a professor of mathematics at Oxford University before he was more well-known as the… read more

What if there was a central place for all of humanity to text, tweet, email, blog and click in the essence of their mood in the moment? This gigantic feelings aggregator would provide a massive emotional pulse check on the planet that runs continually. Represented as a color wheel inspired by the mood rings of the 1970s, blue and violet would signify people being in cooler, calmer… read more

June 17, 2010

Wikipedia | Mae is an American rock bandthat formed in Norfolk, Virginia in 2001. The band’s name is an acronym for “Multi-sensory Aesthetic Experience,” based on a course taken by drummer Jacob Marshall while a student at Old Dominion University.

Singularity is Mae’s third full-length release and their major label debut. The album was originally to be released in April 2007 on Tooth & Nail Records like their previous… read more

April 29, 2010

Source:Yorkshire Evening Post — April 29, 2010 | Duncan Seaman

“I don’t think it was a conscious decision to change any of our sounds, more that we have progressed as a band,” explains bass player Walter Gervers of Foals’ new album Total Life Forever. “Our tastes have changed. What we were trying to create was a record with more space and more freedom than the first time.”

The album’s title track was inspired by Raymond Kurzweil, the… read more

April 29, 2010

Source:The Providence Phoenix — February 9, 2010 | Jonathan Donaldson

Yeasayer have created a decadent, densely produced mess of a second album. Like other bands trying to do art rock in 2010, they confront us with the irony that their world of genre-melding futurism (a/k/a Brooklyn) can sound dated from the moment you get off the plane.

This aside, Odd Blood is a sprawling trip through Yeasayer’s uniquely rhythmic takes on rock and roll, art rock, R&B, electronic,… read more

March 31, 2010

Geraci defines Apocalyptic AI as a modern cultural and religious trend originating in the popular science press: “Popular science authors in robotics and artificial intelligence have become the most influential spokespeople for apocalyptic theology in the Western world. Apocalyptic AI advocates promise that in the very near future technological progress will allow us to build supremely intelligent machines and to copy our own minds into machines so that we can… read more

March 9, 2010

Rob Prior | A short 3D film I made last year. I am currently putting together my second short film which will be named ‘Chiyo.’ Here you can follow the film’s progress from original thoughts, to sketchbook drawings all the way through to the final outcome… your opinions and comments during this process my well influence some of the directions I decided to take.

I recently watched James Cameron’s Avatar in 3D. It was an enjoyable experience in some ways, but overall I left dismayed on a number of levels.

It was enjoyable to watch the lush three-dimensional animation and motion capture controlled graphics. I’m not sure that 3D will take over – as many now expect – until we get rid of the glasses (and there are emerging technologies to do that… read more